The Dreamwalker's Path

5/ Carter Street Market, Sanctuary

It was the busiest that Carter Street had ever been, or so Chapel suspected. People were rushing around like crickets being chased by chickens, trying to get the best price for their junk and the most junk for their sprockets. Apparently it was a good time to be a buyer. That’s what Caitell told him the last time she’d taken him shopping with her. Chapel knew about as much about buying and selling as he did about pixie butts. Probably less, actually. He had daily contact with pixie butts, at least.

“Twix, get yer dang tail outta mah face, or I’ll pop it off and sell it to the Speller for somethin’ real stupid.”

The chameleon fairy rearranged himself on Chapel’s shoulder and stuck his bulging eyeballs in Chapel’s face.

“Is this better?” The fairy loomed closer and then farther away, giggling. “If I do this long enough, do you think you’ll puke?”

“Probably,” Chapel pushed the pixie away, brushing him off of his shoulder entirely so that Twix was forced to take flight on his tiny dragonfly wings. “An’ I’ll make sure I puke right on top of yer head, too.”

“Ew! Pukey child! Human children are so unflattering: full of puke and snot and turds. A pixie kid would never puke!”

“No, but a full grown pixie’ll poop on your pillow if he gets bored,” Chapel muttered darkly, glaring at Twix. It was one thing to listen to someone else squeal about pixie turds in their ears, but quite another to find it happening to yourself. “It’s unsanitary, you know.”

“Pah! You sound like the witch,” Twix puffed up slightly, gave a loud belch that caused two or three people standing in front of the Atlantian Express to turn and eyeball the blue pixie disapprovingly. His job done, Twix deflated, floating back down to Chapel’s shoulder and smacking his lips. “She’ll tame you up, Chapel, just you watch. She’ll bewitchy-witch you and the next thing you know, you’ll be wearing shoes and think that picking your nose and snorting snot is wrong.”

Chapel rubbed his nose self-consciously. He hadn’t snorted snot or picked a booger in a long time. He wondered if that was Twix’s way of making fun of him for not doing it. Maybe he should start again; after all, there wasn’t anything better than a wiping a fresh picked booger on someone you didn’t like.

“Shuddup, Twix, we’re ‘posta be out lookin’ for Caitell, an’ her feelin’s’d be hurt if she heard you talkin’ bad about her.”

“Well I don’t like her. Never have liked her, never will like her. That’s just the way the turd falls out.”

“Ah’ll putcha in my pocket, Twix, Ah really will.”

“Oooo, scary!” The pixie scuttled into the mess of dirty hair on top of the boy’s head and made a show of peeking through the strands. Chapel couldn’t see him, of course, but he’d seen Twix do it often enough to other Eastlings that he knew exactly what the pixie looked like up there, his big pop-out eyeballs protruding, gaping mouth open, tongue wiggling in the hope that something delicious would land on it...

Sure enough, the pixie trilled in excitement and a pink tongue lowered itself into Chapel’s line of sight. A fly was stuck to the tip.

“THO EW THEE HAT EYY GAUGHT, THAPLE?!

’OOK A THE THIZE OTH THAT ONE!”

“Twix, get yer tongue outta mah face, Ah can’t see where Ah’m goin’...”

He tried to wave the tongue and fly out of his vision, but it was too late. Before he realized what happened, he and someone else went toppling to the pavement.

“Oi! You watch where you’re goin’, stupid kid!”

Despite the insult, the voice of the person in question was nearly as young as Chapel’s. There was something strangely familiar about it, but Chapel wasn’t really sure where he’d heard the voice before until Twix took flight, bringing his tongue and fly with him.

The boy that Chapel landed on was a dark haired, dark eyed boy only a few years older than Chapel looked, and judging by the look on his face as he pushed and kicked at Chapel, he was mad as a kicked bullfrog. “Gerroff me!” he snapped again, pushing Chapel away as roughly as he could manage with one arm pinned under him.

Chapel thought it was probably best if he just apologized for Twix the way he normally did and went about his business, so he opened his mouth to explain the situation when the boy added: “Ya dern stupit Eastling.”

Any inclination that Chapel had for an apology went zipping away like Twix after a fart. Chapel didn’t know which gang this boy thought he was from, but he knew that anyone who called an Eastling stupid deserved to have his face broken. So instead of clambering off of the boy apologetically as he had planned to, Chapel grabbed a hold of the boy and shouted, “You take that back! You don’t EVER call any Eastling stupid, you-you STUPID!”

Then all hell broke loose.

The boy balled his fist and punched Chapel right across the right cheek, and Chapel, shouting his most fierce battle cry, returned the favor. The adults standing around them, suddenly aware that the situation had become violent, skittered backward. The vendor of The Atlantic Express shouted something, covering his wares with a worn cloth, and several of his patrons scattered in panic.

Chapel and the boy rolled around on the ground, grabbing at anything that they could to get leverage over the other. All the while, Chapel shouted, “You take back what you said!” and the boy shrieked, “You cog-crazy Eastlin’ let me go!”

And then suddenly two very strong hands gripped Chapel by his arms and yanked him backward. Another pair of hands appeared and grabbed the older boy just in time to stop him from landing a kick in Chapel’s belly.

“I hope y’all saw him! I hope you did! He jus’ come flyin’ outta nowhere and tackled me like it was an ambush!” The boy pointed accusingly toward Chapel while Chapel shouted his own defense.

And then Chapel looked up, and he saw who he was shouting at, and his heart did a sort of funny thing where it slid down to the bottom of his tummy and trembled. “Uh oh.”

Chapel couldn’t remember which Hour wore green, but he didn’t need to know what the man’s rank was to know that he was not very happy at what he had uncovered.

“Well, Five, it looks like we’ve stumbled upon a confrontation.”

Chapel looked nervously in the direction of the adult who had pulled the dark haired boy away from him. Sure enough, the round faced man who held on to the boy wore the dark amethyst robes of the Fifth Hour. Chapel noted, a little bitterly, that Five had a very serene look on his face in comparison to the green-clad Hour.

Jus′ mah luck, Chapel thought. Ah always get the pissed- offest adult when I get in trouble. He sniffed and crossed his arms over his chest.

“It was an accident,” he said the words much quieter than before. “But then he insulted me an’ you’da punched him too if you were me.”

Chapel’s words caused a look of confusion to pass over the man’s face. He looked to Five who shrugged and said, “Eight, I will take this one back to his home; we can continue our conversation back at the Hall of the Hours if you wish.”

Eight (that’s right, Chapel remembered. Eight wears the green coat) nodded and watched as Five escorted the dark haired boy through the eager-to-part crowd.

He turned back to Chapel, and rather than continuing to scold Chapel, as the boy had anticipated, he said, “If I were you, there would be no one to be me, and you would have gotten your small backside kicked as soon as that boy over there got his feet under him; so were I you, I would be thankful that I am not you and that you still have all of your milk teeth.” He knelt down and inspected the boy carefully. “But as the matter stands, I am me and you are you, and I think that you will be bruised, but you will live.”

He touched the boy’s face lightly and then stood again. “Come along, Chapel Tames; I will escort you back to East End so that you do not get yourself into any more trouble.”

Chapel breathed a sigh of relief followed by a small hiccough. “You’re not gonna arrest me an’ make an example of me?”

“No. You are too small to make an example of; not everyone will be able to see you.”

Chapel wasn’t really certain how he was supposed to take that. He suspected that it was a joke, or that it was supposed to be a joke, but it wasn’t a particularly funny one if anyone asked him. Of course, no one did ask him. Maybe that’s what the Hour meant.

For a long moment, Chapel glared up at the Hour, half wishing that the tall man hadn’t been in the area, while also wishing that he himself was tall enough that he could, in fact, punch the Hour in the face.

As far as he was concerned, the Hours and Time were nosey filth for stopping the riot on Carter’s Street, which was supposed to have been the end of the Westies for good, and to allow the Eastlings to focus on the other two gangs that had slowly begun to encroach upon their territory. If they had only let the Eastlings alone, Chapel thought, they would have been more than able to clean up Sanctuary’s streets and keep dirty Westie demons and the Southbit monkeys from spreading all over Time’s city.

Even as Chapel looked at the Hour, he knew that being tall enough to punch him would bring nothing but more trouble to his end of things. Besides, Chapel thought suddenly, it looked like he was getting out of trouble now, and maybe the big green guy would prove some sort of useful.

Sniffing in an attempt to puff himself up and make himself look as imposing as the Hour he stood in front of, Chapel said, “Hey, uh, you’re an Hour so you know practically everythin’ right?”

The Hour had already begun to turn away, his long strides taking him towards East End. It took two steps and a skip to keep up with each of the much longer strides of the Hour, but he managed all right. Somewhere along the way, Twix zipped up to them and hid himself in Chapel’s pocket, quiet for the first time in what Chapel thought might be the pixie’s entire life.

The Hour seemed to consider the boy’s question. “I don’t know everything, but if you have a question, I can do my best to answer it.”

“Well I jus’ wanted to know where Caitell Steeps was, is all. We—mah pixie and me—we was out lookin’ for her, and that’s what that thing that won’t ever happen again happened. But I still want to know where she is ‘cause Ah’m s’posed to make mashed potatoes to go with dinner, but I en’t never seen a mashed potato before in my life, an’ I don’t know how, so I was gonna ask her how.”

Whatever the Hour expected, that wasn’t it. He paused at the intersection of East End and Carter’s Street, canting his head slightly. “I don’t know where she is, but I’m sure that she will be back soon to help you. The Eastlings were a big group, were they not? Where are the others?”

Chapel shrugged and didn’t bother hiding his annoyance. “Well after you Hours and Time got mad at us all, they thought it was best not ta hang around East End any more so they wouldn’t get into trouble. But Caitell and Jackal worked hard on the house, so Caitell didn’t want to leave it. Even though—well even though Jackal en’t here anymore.”

A look of contemplation passed across the Hour’s face followed by a look that Chapel didn’t recognize. It pinched the dark brows of the Hour together and curled his lips in something between a frown and a grimace. “I see,” was all the Hour said for a moment. He continued down the road to East End before adding, “Well,” in a voice that sounded resigned. “I will see if we can piece together the best way to mash a potato for you. It would be better if you weren’t out on the street by yourself from now on.”

Chapel wanted to say that there was fat chance of that because he knew the city better than anyone ever born and he knew how to keep out of trouble if he wanted to, but somehow after the fight with the other boy, it didn’t seem like it was a good idea to boast about that sort of thing. He wouldn’t want the Hour to think that he was big enough to make an example of after all.

“Is it neat?” he asked suddenly, “Bein’ an Hour and not havin’ anyone tell you what ta do an’ stuff?”

The Eighth Hour chuckled. “We are told what to do, Chapel Tames, just like everyone else in Sanctuary.”

“By Time?”

“By Time,” the Hour confirmed.

Chapel thought about this. “Ah en’t never seen Time before,” he said to the Hour. “If you Hours weren’t around tellin’ everyone what to do, Ah’d think Time weren’t even real, you know? That’s weird, innit? Since Ah was born here, you’d think Ah might have, but Time en’t never around.”

The Hour glanced briefly at him. “Time has more important things to do than to wander around the city.”

“Yeah, Ah figured that. I jus’ also figured it was weird, yah know? ‘Cause I was thinkin’ that if Time were so sore about all the gangs fightin’ against each other, maybe Time ought ta have been around so she coulda seen it and stopped it.”

The Hour turned so quickly that Chapel bounced off of him. He bore down on the boy, looming with his one eye narrowed almost accusingly at the boy.

Chapel swallowed and looked up at the man. He thought he should apologize. Then, he thought he had better just keep himself very quiet in case he said something else to make the Hour more upset.

“Are you implying, child, that Time is to blame for the war of the child-gangs?”

The smart thing was not to answer, but Chapel knew he wasn’t very bright at the best of times, and he certainly wasn’t bright under pressure. He said, “Well, Hour, sir, Ah en’t an expert, but Ah don’t know anyone who was tol’ by Time that punchin’ a Southbit in the face is wrong, and Ah en’t never seen Time break up any fights if you Hour folks weren’t around.” He shrugged.

The Hour did not speak. He stared at Chapel the way that Twix stared at flies.

“You en’t human as you look, are yah?” he asked the Hour, shrewdly.

The Hour laughed. The sound was very sudden, and loud, and it revealed a set of very white and impressively sharp looking teeth. A long, pink tongue that rivaled Twix’s lolled briefly into view, and Chapel saw that the tongue, too, had a sharp tooth, just on the end. The tongue disappeared as quickly as it had appeared for the display. “Decidedly not,” the Hour crooned.

In a fluid motion, the green-clad man, who was not a man, strode off again.

Chapel step-step-skipped at the Hour’s side without speaking for several moments. Then Chapel felt something wet on his head, and he skidded to a stop. “Twix!” He looked around over his head. “Did you just pee on me?!”

The Hour, surprised, paused mid-stride and turned to look over his shoulder at the boy. “I beg your pardon?”

Chapel opened his mouth to explain but he got hit a second time—then a third and fourth almost simultaneously.

From somewhere in his pocket, Twix stirred and muttered, “Wasn’t me...” and Chapel was left gaping at the empty air.

Except suddenly it wasn’t empty. Somehow, like magic, water droplets were falling from nowhere and smacking Chapel and the Hour and the broken road of East End with little pat-pats.

“Ah think...Ah think the sky is peeing on us, sir,” Chapel looked up at Eight in a horrified manner. “Why the heck is it peeing on us?”

Eight didn’t answer for several moments. Instead he looked up at the sky, then down at the ground, and then back at Chapel with that same contemplative expression on his face. At long length, he said, “It isn’t pee, Chapel. It’s rain.”